Cipollini exits early

Since Saturday's time-trial, the Tour has gone tactical. None of the potential winners has wanted to commit troops to controlling the race, which has allowed the lesser lights to make hay.

Yesterday the final fling of the flat-earth men before the Pyrenees went, appropriately, to a Dutchman, Leon Van Bon.

Even Van Bon and his fellow spear-carriers felt they had to play a cycling version of poker. Having spent more than 100 miles outspeeding the peloton, the Dutchman and his surviving companions, the Italian Massimiliano Lelli and the German Jens Voigt, decided to stage a go-slow in the final two miles.

Lelli, as a team-mate of the race leader Laurent Desbiens, had been ordered not to contribute to the pacemaking throughout the stage. Voigt and Van Bon were clearly worried that, having saved his strength, he would simply ride away if the sprint were more than a brief effort in the final metres.

With the pack bearing down on the trio and the Frenchman Christophe Agnolutto, who had disappeared from the reckoning on the final hill, making a desperate comeback, their back-sliding looked like madness induced by the 40C heat. But it was madness justified when Van Bon provided his Rabobank team with the stage win which eluded them last year.

There will be no such nuances today when the race tackles the classic Pyrenean route from Pau to Luchon, 122 miles over the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde passes. This is one of the great set pieces of the Tour, the route taken in 1910 when the race entered the mountains for the first time.

As has been the case in each of his four previous Tours, Mario Cipollini did not make it to the Pyrenees. This year the `Lion King' has ridden a red, white and blue bike bearing the slogan Vive la France and he had declared that this time he would make Paris. Apparently he felt unwell.

"After the time trial on Saturday, I began to have stomach problems," said Cipollini. "Today, during the stage, I could no longer eat. I didn't have any strength left. "This year I really wanted to finish, I was in the form to do it. It's a shame."